Ex-unemployed (Part 1)

I was unemployed for about eight months. Fortunately I was offered a position in August and I started my new job for a month already. Unemployment will be one of the phases in life that many people will have to go through, whether you are in there for a month or a year. The earlier you get out of it, the better for you and your family.

There is a great stigma attached to being unemployed. It is not very nice to tell people that you do not have a job. In fact, I have been in this situation more than once, and it can be quite embarrassing. In this society where people are judged by the work they do, having no work at all will obviously look bad. Even if you are a struggling part time student, you will still be judged and condemned. It does not feel very nice. Nobody cares that if you are doing well with your night classes; they see that you have no job, therefore you are bum. It’s a superficial and unfair way of looking at people but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Let us not be frustrated and deal with it one step at a time.

If you have just graduated, I  congratulate you. Unfortunately, you have just left the sheltered harbour of school, and you are about to enter into a treacherous job market. A good education is a mere stepping stone into a career. Even if you have a degree, you may not be able to find suitable work in your field. We may have friends or colleagues who are in totally unrelated industries other than the one they were originally trained for. There is nothing wrong with this if you have a plan and the means to achieve it. However based on my observation, I find that the mass majority of job hunters are very clueless. What do I mean by clueless? There is one simple question, yet it is difficult to answer. It is:  ‘What do you want?’

Perhaps along the way we have forgotten what we wanted to achieve, or we have made some irreversible mistakes that precludes us from taking certain paths. This is fine.  Career guidance is sorely lacking in schools as well. That’s fine too. What is not fine is that we are going through life everyday without any reflection on actions or outcomes. Personally I find it very scary. We have become walking zombies. It is time to stop wasting and start taking action.

Next time round we will discuss some simple methods of prevention, which may apply to you if you are young, otherwise it may be too late for you. Nonetheless I hope you will pass on the lessons to the young ones so that they do not make the mistakes that we have made.